7 Female Artists You Must See at Frieze Art Fair

It's easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to fine art.

It's easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to fine art. What is good art? How do you find it? We're never quite sure. So we enlisted Sara Friedlander, VP and head of the evening sale in the post-war and contemporary art department at Christie's (and, full disclosure, ELLE.com deputy editor Ruthie's big sis), to give us a run down of who's who in the art world. And what better time to get a primer than now, at the start of the Frieze Art Fair in New York. ( Frieze New York runs from May 9-12.) Here, Friedlander tells us what female artists we need to see at Frieze, should you be making your way to Randall's Island this weekend.

More

view gallery

01of08

01Of08

01Of08

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to fine art. What is good art? How do you find it? We're never quite sure. So we enlisted Sara Friedlander, VP and head of the evening sale in the post war and contemporary art department at Christie’s (and, full disclosure, ELLE.com deputy editor Ruthie's big sis) to give us a run down of who’s who in the art world. And what better time to get a primer than now, at the start of the Frieze Art Fair in New York. ( Frieze New York runs from May 9-12.) Here, Friedlander tells us what female artists we need to see at Frieze, should you be making your way to Randall's Island this weekend.

Katie Friedman

01Of08

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

The late, great Louise Bourgeois’ gouache paintings illustrate her preoccupation with the relationships of family, coupling, pregnancy, and childrearing. They relate to earlier sculptures completed in the '60s and '70s, when the human body was reduced to a limbless form.

Louise Bourgeois

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to fine art. What is good art? How do you find it? We're never quite sure. So we enlisted Sara Friedlander, VP and head of the evening sale in the post war and contemporary art department at Christie’s (and, full disclosure, ELLE.com deputy editor Ruthie's big sis) to give us a run down of who’s who in the art world. And what better time to get a primer than now, at the start of the Frieze Art Fair in New York. ( Frieze New York runs from May 9-12.) Here, Friedlander tells us what female artists we need to see at Frieze, should you be making your way to Randall's Island this weekend.

Katie Friedman

2Of8

Louise Bourgeois

The late, great Louise Bourgeois’ gouache paintings illustrate her preoccupation with the relationships of family, coupling, pregnancy, and childrearing. They relate to earlier sculptures completed in the '60s and '70s, when the human body was reduced to a limbless form.

The Family, 2008

Gouache on paper, suite of 36

14 x 11 in. (each)

Gallery: Hauser & Wirth, New York, London, Zurich

Courtesy of Hauser and Wirth

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

3Of8

Jac Leirner

Jac Leirner is one of Latin America’s leading conceptual artists and currently has a retrospective at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico. She accumulates ‘found’ objects like nautical ropes, climbing clips, and curtain rings to use as ready-made materials for her art. This work features 10 bamboo spirit levels, carefully arranged and assembled, exploring concepts of originality and repetition.

10 bamboo levels, 2013

Metal, plastic, and wood

55 7/8 x 48 1/16 x 1 3/16 in.

(142 x 122 x 3 cm)

Gallery: White Cube, London

Courtesy of White Cube, London

4Of8

Andrea Zittel

I am obsessed with Andrea Zittel’s Aggregated Stacks. They can be shown bare (as illustrated here), but can also be used as functional shelves. Made from re-used FedEx boxes and packages that the artist gets delivered to her in the desert, the works are then re-cycled into new patterns. As the artist herself states: “I find that we as humans aspire toward the orderly and systematic, however life itself is quite chaotic.”

A-Z Aggregated Stacks #9 2012

cardboard, plaster gauze

45.5 x 58.5 x 17.50 inches

(115.6 x 148.6 x 44.5 cm)

Gallery: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York

bo

Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

5Of8

Jutta Koether

German artist Jutta Koether is a painter/sculptor/performance artist. Her works are an interdisciplinary artistic practice overlapping performance, music and writing, and reflect her strong, feminist, punk/pop-influenced purview with contemporary theory and culture.

The Seasons #5, 2012

Acrylic, liquid glass, and mixed media on canvas with concrete and glass display

Canvas: 16 x 20 in/ 40.6 x 50.8 cm

Concrete: 18 x 18 x 18 in/ 45.7 x 45.7 x 45.7 cm

Glass: 72 x 36 in/ 182.9 x 91.4 cm

Gallery: Bortolami, New York

Courtesy of Bortolomi, New York

6Of8

Yayoi Kusama

This is a brand new painting by one of my most favorite artists! And it’s a self-portrait! Doesn’t get much better than Kusama’s signature “infinity net” motif coupled with the chicest haircut of all time.

SELF-PORTRAIT [BOTEFO], 2014

Acrylic on canvas

57 3/8 x 57 3/8 inches

(145.5 x 145.5 cm)

Gallery: David Zwirner Gallery, New York and London

Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

7Of8

Suzanne McClelland

With so many artists re-investigating the traditional medium of paint, it’s hard to find someone who works in a truly innovative way. Not the case with Suzanne McClelland, whose exciting new series executed in pigment, gesso, polymer, and oil paint pays homage to a single 1967 canvas by German artist Sigmar Polke with nine patently false equations (4 + 4 = 15).

Solutions for Polke (4 + 4 = 15),

2013

dry pigment, gesso, polymer and oil paint on portrait linen

40 x 48 inches

(101.6 x 121.9 cm)

Gallery: Team Gallery, New York

Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York

8Of8

Sylvie Fleury

Swiss contemporary pop artist Sylvie Fleury is best known for her mises-en-scène of glamour, fashion, and luxury products. This steel monochrome Crash Test was made by coating steel panels with vibrant car paint (in this case, Petrol Blue) and then colliding into the paintings herself with a crash-test car, creating abstract dents and details on the surface of the composition. It has a gorgeous high-polish, candy-color surface—though it’s deformed by large dents and scratches, which alludes to the wreckage of consumerist culture.